Dr. Roberto Canessa

On October 12, 1972, a Uruguayan Air Force plane carrying members of the “Old Christians” rugby team—and many of their friends and family members—crashed into the Andes Mountains. I Had to Survive offers a gripping and heartrending recollection of the harrowing brink-of-death experience that propelled survivor Roberto Canessa to become one of the world’s leading pediatric cardiologists.

In 1972, a few days before Christmas, Dr. Roberto Canessa shocked the world when he and Fernando Parrado arrived in Chile after surviving a horrific plane crash and then hiking across the Andes mountains for ten days at an altitude of 16,404 feet and temperatures of twenty-two degrees below zero. Canessa and Parrado guided a rescue party back to their fourteen friends who were still trapped on the mountain two months after the initial search for them had been called off. Dr. Canessa went on to become a pediatric cardiologist, world-renowned for his work with newborn patients and prenatal echocardiography at the Hospital Italiano of Montevideo.

Roberto Canessa made history for being one of the two men who stunned the world for surviving after walking eleven days and climbing 15.000 thousand feet in the Chilean snow capped Andes Cordillera, to guide rescuers back to 14 friends still trapped in the mountains 72 days after their plane crashed. He was one of 16 young men of 45 rugby players who endured extreme conditions severe cold, injuries, starvation and isolation in December 1972.

"The potential that we all have is rarely fully used and although the helicopters rescued our teammates, at the same time I learned that I had to go walking to tell them where we were."